October 30, 2008
“Not your finest hour,”
“Is this really the feature story?”
These were two of the comments that greeted Newspaper Tree’s treatment of the release of a pornographic movie starring a Sarah Palin look-alike.
These comments raise a valid question: What is credible news? Is this it? Surely, is it not too frivolous and distasteful a topic? Are we not giving it unjustified credence and dignity by reporting it? Doesn’t this sort of thing belong on a silly blog instead?
But one could argue that it absolutely is news. First, and most practically, the piece remained the top story for the day, and Newspaper Tree is not the sort of website that idle surfers stumble across. Our readers found this interesting.
I believe that because the event occurred, combined with the interest it generated, much can be said about society and politics in America. But its unimportance lies in the fact that it is a historical marker, not a turning point. It is a glaring example of where things are, not where they are going.
Recently, French President Nicolas Sarkozy lost a legal battle with a Parisian company that manufactured Voodoo dolls of him in effigy. (They came complete with pins.) Though Sarkozy lost the case, and the look-alike dolls continue to be produced, the issue caused a minor uproar. This side of the Atlantic, the McCain-Palin campaign have made no complaint, have taken no legal action against the porn film’s producer, Hustler.
This is because they either believe the film to be inoffensive (unlikely considering Palin is an evangelical mother of five) or that it will have no political consequences.
But why would it not have consequences? I believe the reason is simple. Over the last 20 years, our politicians have become so dehumanized, their views so commoditized, that what difference does a well-publicized porno make? The film doesn’t porno-fy politics: it merely illuminates the pornographication of politics.
What is pornography? It is also the commoditization of sex: the compartmentalization of a multifaceted experience that is repackaged and sold for a price. It is the distillation of all that is exclusively sexual about sex.
But any good lover knows that there’s more to sex than sex. (Or at east more to sex than porn.) It is, therefore, an abstraction of sexuality from real life (from human relationships). Sensuality becomes fast food, something quick and easy to be consumed, no longer a complex, nuanced and vulnerable undertaking. It is the de-sensualization of love-making by the ultra-sensualization of it.
All these things have happened to American politics. Values are abstracted from life’s complexity and poured into sound bites. Morality becomes something consumed to satisfy one’s identity needs. A political manifesto is a quick fix , a Big Mac solution that quenches hunger without providing the body politic with nutrition. The political process has become de-politicized by its ultra-politicization.
Politics has become pornography in that it masturbates our egos while it dehumanizes others’. Negative campaigning is its biggest star.
When did this begin? One might posit the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal as a watershed. Indeed, presidential affairs are so common in American history that the historian of the future will be thoroughly un-interested in President Clinton’s behavior and utterly engrossed in the responses of his political opponents and the electorate.
But the pornographication of politics must have been under way before then. If not, the scandal wouldn’t have taken place, having no cultural infrastructure in which to flourish.
For the sake of argument, why don’t we fuzzily delineate 1989 as a starting point. The end of the Cold War left a massive political vacuum. American politics became less grave. The common enemy was removed, and bipartisanship began to breakdown.
Meanwhile, in a booming economy, Americans were more able than at any other time to buy, consume and experience those things that are accessory to life. (The stuff we don’t need.)
Social mores that had been propped up by the Cold War (or at least the pretense of them) began to dissemble. Continuing on from the 1980s, life continued to be commoditized: its raison d'être increasingly governed by consumption rather than struggle, good vs. evil, or life after death. Existence became suburban.
Interestingly, the Religious Right were no pariahs to this experience. They were its apostles. The disciples of Kenneth Starr partook in the McDonaldization of religion, honing it as a spiritual consumer product. (i.e. mega-churches, get-rich/saved/God/laid-quick books, abortion bumper stickers, Christian Rock).
Evangelical politicians pioneered the commoditization of morality. Issues became products to consume; hallmarks of political identity rather than behavior. For example, 20 out of the last 28 years have seen pro-life presidents in the White House. Roe vs. Wade stands. Why? It’s simple.
Do you think the Karl Roves of this world make all those nasty mail-outs in order to change the course of the nation or to win elections? It is, of course, to win elections.
Values are a means to a very postmodern end: power. For example, abortion is most useful as an issue – as a bogeyman. It is no good to the powers-that-be as a ticked box on the checklist to make America a Godly nation once more. They are employed to massage the electorate rather than to obey them. Issues are more about the identity of the saints rather than the actions of the sinners. They are marks of consumption; a bumper sticker on the psyche. It’s the same with gay marriage.
These shifts were what characterized the Lewinsky affair. It was one massive “celebration” of what it meant to be an evangelical Christian. Clinton was merely the sacrificial lamb. House Republicans were the televangelists taking the congregation’s credit card information. It was what happened outside the Oval Office that was really pornographic. Palin porno pails in insignificance.
And so we find ourselves in a world where issues are commodities to be exploited and consumed. Our politicians are nothing more than totem polls to be erected by the faithful and desecrated by enemy tribes. Negative campaigning provides the ritualistic framework within which at all happens. It is the tragedy of American politics.
Negative campaigning leaves 40 to 49 percent of the electorate feeling betrayed and humiliated as their totem is torn down. But the totem is not a parody. It is a person in whom the identity of many has been invested.
On Nov. 4th, millions of people will think the country is in the hands of either a terrorist-sympathizing closet-Muslim or a decrepit septuagenarian accompanied by a gung-ho, cheerleading hick. No one wins. The mutilation of the loser’s persona, ideas and supporters will be the winner’s most glaring accomplishment.
Long before Hustler, the pornographication of American politics was complete. Negative campaigning is its Larry Flynt, and we are all creeps glued to the computer.
Well, that is, as long as we tolerate the immorality of negative campaigning; as long as we tolerate the commoditization of our values (which artificially polarizes them), as long as we tolerate the abstraction of feeling from reason, which the logic of the demagogue insists upon.
These pornographic things trespass tragically on both the dignity of human beings and the transcendence of human reason.
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Ben Wright is a contributing writer to Newspaper Tree from England who has worked as a Christian youth minister in El Paso and Lyon, France. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in history, with an emphasis on American and European politics, from Kings College in London and plans to begin work on a Ph.D. next fall.
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